12 big new indie games announced for PS4, PS Vita

Earlier today we held a media event at SCEA HQ in San Mateo, California showcasing the huge breadth of quality indie titles coming soon to PS3, PS4 and PS Vita. As well as showing off a number of announced titles, such as Transistor, The Witness and Velocity 2X (look out for previews on your game sites of choice soon), we also took the opportunity to reveal a raft of new games coming soon to our platforms.

As you may already have noticed, the developers of these games have all kindly taken the time to write a guest post for PlayStation Blog to announce their projects personally. In the interests of making it easier for you to browse the new announcements, please see the summary below and click on each game to find out more details, and view trailers and screenshots.

This. It absolutely infuriates me when people assume indie automatically means poor or limited quality. Many of these studios have amazing vision and ability, and as those of us that actually give them a chance see, new ideas.

One thing that I like about the PS4 is that it has a library of games that just keeps coming. If you compare this with the “older” console generation(s) then it has always been one new big release and then wait for the next one. But now we have a huge indie catalogue to play while we wait for the big games. Also, indie games are healthy for the industry as a whole!

Thank goodness you put them all in a single blog post instead of a dozen individual ones, like what the US blog is doing. I am seriously tired of seeing all the 8-bit graphics indies coming to PS4. Seems like every PC indie developer is porting their game (bargain bin price or humble bundled by now) to PS4 for another revenue stream. I know there are good indies games out there and there are people who like them, but to many, the PS4 has become the next-gen refuge camp for ancient-gen games. It probably takes more than 10x the effort of making a low-end-presentation, single-scene-per-level indie game than to make a full retail game (AAA or much lower), so that ratio is understandable, but as proportionally they should each be given 1/10 of the limelight. So bundling them together in one post is a good idea, as we don’t have to be bombarded with indie news after indie news. Perhaps you should do just one single blog post on “Indie Updates for the Week” and spare us all the individual posts.

There is a huge market for these games on these platforms. The PS4 is still very early in its launch cycle. Its as if you have never owned a launch console before.

There are plenty of AAA games already available or announced for the PS4. Sony is doing an absolutely fantastic job of adding more diversity to their brand this time around and you should be thankful for that wether you play the games or not. More diversity means a greater customer base which means more AAA developers will want to reach that broader audience. Big games take a heck of a long time to develop.

Sony is doing exactly the right thing to drive some real talent to their platforms. The vita is also the absolute perfect device for playing or revisiting indies. I have actually stopped playing indies on my PC now as i know that Sony will be chasing down the good ones for me to play on my vita.

The individual blog posts provide details for those that are interested and give the developers some space to publicize and promote their games and companies – yet another thing Sony is doing right to attract these developers.

No one is forcing you to read every single post and no one is forcing you to play these games.

I would imagine that since the dev teams for these games are quite small, that most only wanted to commit to as few platforms as possible at first. Hopefully we’ll see at least some of the games announced on the Vita in the future!

Nidhogg, Starwhal and PS4 Spelunky. So happy right now I’ve wanted Nidhogg and Starwhal on PS4 since they both launched on steam a few months back and a free version of spelunky is awesome (because I own the game on vita / ps3 and the devs said the ps4 version will be free for the people who own the other versions) .
Pretty much the only indie game I want now that hasn’t been announced for any playstation device is BROFORCE , any chance you can pass this on Fred so the powers that be can make it happen ;).
Seriously though Broforce would be perfect for vita.
Great job as always, keep it up

Wow that is a big lump of games that look like my youth and I don’t care to return to.
I really miss ThatGameCompany with innovative and beautiful indie titles like Flower and Journey. So tired to see the 100th (8 or 16 bit platformer). The 3D game in there looks stunning though.

TGC made the effort to push both themselves and the technology artistically and imaginatively with Flower and Journey…..unfortunately, many of these games look like they’re running on a Vic-20. Critical but true. :/

The only thing I can imagine is that most of the fan base are kids that didn’t grow up with blocky graphics and bad animation, so to them it’s a novelty.

There are some indie devs still out there with the skills and desire to move forward and progress, rather than take a backwards step in recreating the 80s. Hopefully, the consumer will become bored with unrecognisable sprites and 8X8 UDGs and we’ll see the return of games that are as beautiful to look at as they are to play.

I found this article you might be interested in, and there’s some potential stunners on the way:

Firstly, believe it or not, to many folks pixel graphics is an artform in itself. Many gamers, yours truly included, absolutely love that look and would argue it involves just as much artistry and skill to do it effectively as more contemporary 3D visuals.

Secondly, I don’t agree with the inference that because a game has a ‘retro’ look it can’t possibly be innovating on gameplay. They’re two comletely separate aspects of a game. Go through and read some of the developer posts and I think you’ll find some pretty new and interesting ideas on show (eg Axiom Verge’s ‘glitch’ mechanic).

The great thing about gaming in 2014 is that there really is something for everyone out there!

Firstly Fred, neither I or Otto have made any inference that because a game has a retro look it may not be innovative in it’s game play. I don’t see it written in our posts anyway…. We’re merely making honest statements on our first impressions of what we’ve been shown.

Games following an 8-bit representation fail to make me go ‘wow!’ when I see them in action, probably because I played so many back in the 80s that they fail to excite me now. π

Secondly, I appreciate that many see the ‘pixel art’ as an art form, but to assume the creation of a two dimensional sprite is anywhere near as artistically challenging as modelling in three dimensions is maybe just a little naive. I suppose it also takes just as much effort to animate those sprites in their authentic sluggish fashion as it does to animate their 3D counterparts?!

I was referring to this sentence: “There are some indie devs still out there with the skills and desire to move forward and progress, rather than take a backwards step in recreating the 80s.” Apologies if I got the wrong end of the stick.

Re. your second point. I’d certainly agree that to render/animate a 3D model generally takes more time and is more expensive. But I don’t agree it’s more or less artistically challenging – though I guess that’s subjective. Like you say, hourses for courses!

I get where you come from Fred and I appreciate your view but for The Force and I, who lived trough those 8 bit area, played 1000’s of hours of badly made platformer clones and I don’t need a revival of that area.

If you can make ANY game you want, you pretend you are different and it’s that revolutionising that it’s not possible to get it financed by a big company and you make a 8 bit platformer then you seriously make the CoD of the 80’s and 90’s over and over and over again.
To call 8 bit an art form is nonsense. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now. I made more animated sprites in my youth then I dare to admit and it’s not hard or difficult or artful at all. It’s working with the limitations and very easy. Sure for the new kids on the block π it’s all hip and groovy but if I had the money and talent I would push the envelope like ThatGameCompany and not make a black and white art film to release it on videotapes and call it art and indie. I call it a lack of pushing the envelope and abuse freedom with laziness.
Sure this doesn’t go for all indie developers and within the scene there are a FEW amazing developers. I’m looking forward to The Witness and anything ThatGameCompany is dong next and Sony’s own Media Molecule. I’m not resenting indies but I just can’t appreciate 99% of the platformers they bring to the table. It degrades the title “indie” and is a disservice to the gaming industry imho.

I’ve got to say, I’m 100% with Fred on this one. As a gamer whose current age starts with a four, I’ve also been immersed in retro/pixel art/old skool games for many, many years, and you know what? I still can’t get enough of them.

When you consider that some of my absolute favourite contemporary games include the likes of FEZ, Gridrunner++, Super Time Force, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, Terraria and VVVVVV …and… if you try them out for yourself, you might just see where folks like Fred and myself are coming from.

And you never know, they may just bring you over to the 8-bit side of the force… where old timers like myself will be waiting with wide open arms and a warm, welcoming smile

I usually appreciate your view Otto, but the claim that 8 bit shouldn’t be considered an art form is unsustainable.

ANYTHING that can cause an emotion is art. And if the 8bit sprites from Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI touched and moved me more than any game characters that followed them, who are you to say that 8bit isn’t art?
8bit leaves me more freedom for my imagination. And it makes absolutely no sense that such freedom for one’s imagination, should only be valued if you have the choice between a book or the movie version.

So if you don’t want to play that stuff, fine. But telling us that it is no art form is as pointless as telling someone that black & white photography is no art, just because tech moved on and offers colors.

Aces73High, I’m glad you relive your youth. Let me make clear I don’t resent these kind of games. And a game like Fez really adds something to the pallet but why is it 8 bit style and why are now 100’s of groups reproduce this? What is next, and endless slow of god games like populous or Tetris or Zaxxon? These games already exist so if people care for them release them on new platforms but making them again and again is redundant.
I tried the latest 8bit monstrosity for PS4 on Plus and hated it, not only because of it’s astatic but because I’ve been there and done that and I’m done with it. At the moment I’m playing Rain, a indy game that looks stunning with a hart wrenching story. Sure it’s a platform/puzzler but it couldn’t have been made in 1985. Not a perfect game but a lot of fun.

I get what you are saying, Golwar. Sure you need a lot of imagination when looking at a pixelated figure but the boxART at that time didn’t come close to what it represented in the game. It wasn’t art but had purpose to portray a character or a background or a bullet. Probably (hopefully) created by an artist but that doesn’t make it art.
Take comics or strips as we call them here. I know a lot of people working in that industry. Almost non of them consider themselves an artist. Everything they do it produce drawings to tell a story as clearly as possible (and I have it hanging on my walls but it’s not considered art although in Belgium they call it lovingly the ninth art).
Art let you decide what the story is. look at a Mona Lisa. It’s probably a woman but what is she doing, what is going on in her mind, where is she looking at. I’d love to go so far to say Journey IS art or at least very close because it doesn’t explain anything, not the world, nor why you are there or who you are and what you need to do, but a 8×8 pixel game character that shoots and hops from platform to platform is not. But lets agree to disagree.

I agree. These retro style games just dont wow me. I have played my fair share of them and there are a few classics but we dont need as many as there are. Its almost becoming a trend but I think they lose a lot of customers. Im willing to give these games a try but I Have 2 older brothers who wont even give them a look

Starbound won’t be on Vita any time soon. It’s still in the Alpha stage of development on PC, on top of that there’s console licensing fees, rating certification, porting. It’s very expensive to do, especially for startup indies.

Source is a definite purchase for me. How in god’s name is Axiom Verge allowed to exist. It is a complete rip-off of Super Metroid. An homage at very best. Two buzzwords that are creeping in all the time now that put me off games are ‘Procedurally Generated’ I prefer to go back to a game and get to know it inside out so half of that list is a definite no go.

Games like Terraria and Minecraft would get very boring if they weren’t procedurally generated. There’s plenty of games out there that have fixed level creation, so leave this one to the games who want to play games like this that have something new to offer every time they play.

Of this entire list of a delicious DOZEN indie beauties, only a measly TWO are headed to Vita!? Say it ain’t so!? Maybe I’m spoilt by Sony’s incredible indie support, but after the initial buzz of reading that headline up top, I feel incredibly disappointed right now.

Don’t get me wrong, Axiom Verge and Drifter look incredible, they really do, but to see arguably superior, more noteworthy indie delights such as Escape Goat 2, Jamestown Plus, Nidhogg and Skulls of the Shogun *not* getting Vita support verges on gut wrenching for me.

My wife of 20yrs (our marriage, not her age… tragically) will attest to the fact that I’m sometimes a smidge melodramatic, but that’s not the case today. Although, if she happens to gaze upon this post (and after that age comment, God I hope she doesn’t), she’ll undoubtedly disagree incessantly!

Moving forward though, I sincerely hope that at least a couple of the above titles will eventually make their way from our HD TV screens to our OLED-clad Vita ones. Indeed, given Sony’s track record, who’s to say they won’t, right? At least, that’s what I’m hoping.

I hear you and we’ll certainly keep you posted if PS Vita version are announced. If you’re a fan of indie gaming you really shouldn’t have a lack of stuff to play on Vita in the coming months – heaps and heaps of great stuff coming up!

Some of those may be possible, some may be locked out due to contractual issues, and some may be in the works. Couldn’t say which! Rest assured, our dev outreach teams in both SCEE and SCEA are phenomenal at what they do. They’re on top of tomorrow’s indie phenomenons well before you or I even know they exist – and talk to absolutely everyone. If something isn’t PlayStation bound, there’s generally a good reason why not.

Capybara games has a exclusive agreement with Microsoft, super time force will be exclusive to xbox 360 and XO. Which is a shame for you coz it looks amazing. So is they’re other game Below and the behemoths game 4. 3 games ps users are sadly gona miss out on. Oh and let’s not forget magic 2015 (with full deck customization) that’s another game ps users aren’t getting :(.

No mention of “Soul Saga” by Disastercake games? A great looking 3D JRPG (just the style, the game is not actually from Japan) that is coming to PS4 and Vita later this year. The footage released so far looks amazing (http://www.disastercake.com/blog/soul-saga-update-11)

I still need to play both Escape Goat 1 and 2. A Vita version of those would be great. So far, I think the number of good indie games on Vita is really impressive. Especially cross buy with PS3/PS4 versions is a great invention. I hope a large portion of this list makes it to Vita too, since that’s where I want to play these games most.

SNES: for example DKC123 rocks (best games ever in my opinion), music ans graphics: i never see something like that again… Gamecube also very cool (Luigi’s Mansion, Mario Party), but whit Mariokart on Wii: i lost my Nintendo love.

Time of PS1/PS2: On Pc the graphics where 4 times nicer, now a days i play 90% of the games on my PS3/Vita (nice graphics). But i am septic about the PS4! But i was born in the golden age: golden game age, that what matters π

While I appreciate seeing these titles available on a new platform, I’ve played the majority of them already on PC and/or iPad. It would be nice to see a few more exclusive or new indie offerings. Having said that, these titles being ported isn’t a bad thing, just unfortunate they’re not fresh.